Bungie has been under constant criticism for several months. First, they presented poor numbers, then they postponed the expansion The Final Shape by several months, and finally laid off employees. But the management remains unchanged. Sounds strange? That’s how it is. But we players shouldn’t be at risk of dying of boredom due to the postponement. That’s why Bungie announced they would deliver additional content for the postponement period.

What kind of content? They probably didn’t know exactly themselves at that point. But now they know and want to share it with the players. On Tuesday, there was the first of three livestreams for the interim event Into the Light. A wave mode with tower defense elements was announced. You defend the last city against attacking enemies by protecting a generator from increasingly stronger enemy waves. This powers gun turrets, traps, and distractions. For each enemy killed, you get points that can be invested in improving the defenses. After every sixth wave, you board the attacking ship and eliminate the commander, which brings a new enemy ship with stronger enemies into play.

After an introductory conversation, exactly this gameplay was shown and the mode was explained in parallel. Activity Designer Noah Lee was chosen for this. It was his first public appearance and you could already notice his lack of practice and nervousness in the introductory conversation. Accordingly, his gameplay wasn’t exactly high quality, and we also made some jokes about the fact that he didn’t use his ultimate ability for the first 20 minutes. Nevertheless, he bravely played 36 rounds in just over 40 minutes for us, until the stream ended quite abruptly. Switch from gameplay to the moderators, brief farewell, done.

What had happened? After a software error, Noah’s desktop was briefly visible. While the mods were already struggling to keep the complaints and insults in the Twitch chat under control, Steam friend requests appeared at Noah shortly after the error. Requests from usernames like “KILL ALL NIGGoRS” and “KILL YOURSELF”. What I hadn’t mentioned so far, because it shouldn’t actually matter: Noah is Black.

The Bungie employees were thus confronted with insults and racist threats both in the chat and via Steam, and then decided to cut the stream short. By now, some of the players have apparently been identified and banned. Nevertheless, this shouldn’t have happened. This isn’t harmless fun, it’s simply disgusting. Both the friend requests and the Twitch chat were simply inhumane. This is no longer toxic. I can understand Bungie here and hope that it won’t just result in a ban in the game, but that charges will also be filed.

But the other reactions in the chat were also extremely negative. People complained about the event, about Bungie, about Destiny 2, about the developers. The basic sentiment in the chat was that everything is bad and Bungie and its employees are the worst developers in the world. A trend that has also taken hold on Reddit and with other games. I play a game to have fun. If it doesn’t give me fun (anymore), then I don’t play it (anymore). Of course, you’ve invested money, but most games - including Destiny 2 - clearly tell you what you’re getting. I paid money and got exactly what I expected and I had fun with it.

Why all this hate? In my early days with Eve Online, but also with other games from that time, it was common to have direct contact with the developers. People had respectful conversations about the game and other things and brought up criticism constructively. Now people insult, demand, and threaten. Everyone sees their needs as the most important and everyone else has to comply. Where does this come from?
However, I understand that more and more developers are withdrawing from the public. No more reactions on Reddit, no active exchange on Discord, no comment functions on videos and news anymore. Why should they? The complaints of the small loud minority are far from constructive criticism that could be used to improve something.